M51 is the whirlpool Galaxy. 23 MILLION light years away! It’s much prettier than my sad blur above but i’m delighted to have found and photographed it. The smaller blur on the left is NGC5195.
I took a number of exposures at 180 seconds, f/8, ISO 800 with a Takumar 200mm lens. I tried combining them with DeepSkyStacker but didn’t see any improvement. The image seems quite noisy and the stars are artifacted so if i’m out tonight i’ll try f/4 ISO 400 and maybe 240 seconds. I’ll also try 60 seconds.
Astrophotography Newbie 